Hunting and Gathering Homo Sapiens

In this chapter, I trace the origins of Homo sapiens and discuss the primary evolutionary developments that occurred during the Middle Stone Age in Africa from the first appearance of anatomically modern humans at Jebel Irhoud, 315 kya to the first successful dispersal of Homo sapiens into the Levant and Arabia during a warm interglacial around 120–90 kya. I review the critical importance of an increasingly volatile climate and discuss the significant behavioral innovations evident in the archaeological record from one of the key refugia for humans during the glacial periods in the southern Cape region. I then discuss contemporary anthropological knowledge about hunter-gatherer societies, outline theories of optimal hunter-gatherer strategies, and analyze the advance of technological knowledge and modern human behavior during the period. I discuss the basics of paleogenetics and how it is used for understanding H. sapiens dispersal across space. In the final section, I present the evidence from the early (and probably failed) human settlements outside the African continent.